I talked to Donald Clarke, director of Survivor SA Santa Carolina who's directed both previous seasons of the island style reality show and also the third season coming to an end with the live finale tonight from 19:30 on M-Net.
Donald Clarke reveals what the hardest emotional part was for him during the making of Survivor SA Santa Carolina, he discussed the live finale tonight and uses the word ''extravaganza'', talks about what made him crazy, how the third season compared to the previous two production wise and what the experience has been like for him. See what he says when I ask him about something nobody knows about: when a part of the hotel collapsed while they were filming the final tribal council on the island!
For my extremely insightful interview with Donald Clarke, revealing a massive amount of behind the scenes info and perspective on Survivor SA Santa Carolina, click on READ MORE below.
What has this experience of directing the third season of Survivor SA been like for you?
It was great fun doing it the third time. What was a big difference was that it wasn't a co-production. We we doing everything and the logistics ourselves, so there was a lot of freedom involved in doing it. Working with the celebrities was great as well in that we kind of knew what we were getting in terms of the people who were involved. It also made life a bit difficult – they were sometimes tricky to deal with: They were quite taken aback with the conditions on the island. All in all a great experience. Ha ha.
Compared to Panama and Malaysia, how did Mozambique as a location made things difficult or differentr from the other two?
Obviously different. Uhm, I think it was probably a little bit more challenging in Malaysia and Panama in that there weren't as many resources close to us – towns and helicopters and boats and things, so we had to bring in a lot of our own infrastructure. What was really great is that South Africa was so close to us and there is a big presence of South Africans in Mozambique and the Mozambicans themselves were really great to work with. The conditions themselves were probably a little bit more extreme than Panama and Malaysia as far as the weather was concerned. It was a bit more extreme.
What was the hardest moment on Survivor SA Santa Carolina for you production wise?
I think the hardest moment was when one of our crew members injured himself – Peter Jones – towards the end of the production and had to be evacuated off the set and taken by a charter to Johannesburg. I came back to Johannesburg and saw him during the filming. He died on our last day of shooting. It was very sad and difficult to deal with. He was a crew member and someone we were working with. That was definitely the most difficult thing to deal with.
I wanted to ask you what was the hardest thing of Survivor SA Santa Carolina to deal with emotionally. Would that be the same answer?
It would be the same answer. I think aside from that, I think emotionally it's always the final day. It's when the contestants face the final jury and emotions run high. The atmosphere is very tense. We do advise the jury to not make it easy for them, and they do. They take it very seriously and they grill the remaining two contestants. It's hard to sit there and watch it go down. The final two contestants are emotionally drained. They're physically and spiritually drained. They're at the end of their journey and they're drawing on their final reserves. Ashley Hayden and GiGi just looked completely tired and exhausted, so I think those final moments sitting there – with the final vote – was just very emotional and very intense.
Then Donald, how would you describe the upcoming live finale of Survivor SA Santa Carolina and what you guys are planning and working on?
I think it's definitely going to be an extravaganza. It's going to be a very entertaining show. We've got Freshlyground who's going to be performaing live. All the contestants bar one [Jub Jub] will be coming back to join us. We will be bringing in a lot of things from the show. We will also have clips and remind the contestants of the akward and embarassing moments and quirky stuff during their stay on the island.
When you work on a show for between 18 to 20 hours a day that you're awake – and I mean you, but also you as the crew – how do you maintain that and do that for a month, and not just physically in body and mind but also doing it so that it keeps the quality great?
Because you're on an isolated location there really isn't anything else to do but work. The crew's incredibly motivated. When I speak for myself, this is the best show that I've worked on. I loved it. And I loved the conditions – and that makes it a lot easier. Beyond that, the crew have to support each other. The medical team is important because they took care of us. If someone cut themselves we try to treat it before it gets infected. The crew rest when they got the change – on boats, at tribal council. I had many a good nap often on the benches of tribal council before the contestants got there. The crew look after one another. The guys doing the big physical work like cameramen and the games team they're give a hand by the crew members who aren't necessarily doing the hard work.
Is there something this time around that you tried to capture or get or focus on or steer away from having done the previous two Survivor SA seasons?
Mmm. It's a tough question. I think what we did do differently this time is we increased our coverage on the island. That meant that we had more cameras and more people available to cover a lot more of the action that was going on on the island. In the past we may have missed one or two of the conversations because the contestants want to be secretive. They whisper quietly or talk behind a bush or try to hide away at the beach. We've increased our coverage on the island. I think that gave us better reality. More storylines are covered. For the contestants there were no opportunity to ''hide'' from the production team.
What made you crazy?
What made me crazy was having to explain to the contestants that they have signed up for this and that we told them how tough the conditions would be. It was really their choice to come along and this is the game and I'm sorry you haven't eaten for five days, and that you're very hot, but this is the game and you've signed up for this.
In terms of techonological advances and looking back from the first season of Survivor SA a few years ago, is the the technological advances making you're life easier or more difficult? For instance Survivor SA is now filmed in full high definition (HD). Does that make it better and more streamlined or more intricate because there's more stuff to keep track of?
Definitely more intricate because there is more stuff. We also moved, to capture our HD, to a tapeless work flow. Everything we filmed was stored as data. That meant that we needed big resources on the mainland to be able to store all of this information. We had to capture it all correctly and then archive it correctly before we use it and edit it in Johannesburg. One of the big challenges is that there's a huge amount of media. Because there's a massive amount of camera work, it's definitely made it more intricate and more challenging. However it did mean that this is the best quality of Survivor SA that we've ever done in full HD which was really amazing. It's wonderful to see the end product and the detail and the sweat and the blood and the games that we've built and the props at tribal council. To see that in full HD is just really incredible.
Viewers won't know, but during the last tribal council a part of the roof in the abandoned hotel fell in while you guys were shooting and then also the tribal council goes on for ages longer than the few minutes viewers see on screen – can you tell me a little bit about the challenges of filming the tribal council and what to use and what not.
One thing that we have to always weight up on the set of Survivor SA is that it's a TV show – but there's also the game itself. The contestants take it very seriously. It's also very important for the credibility of the show that things are done fairly and that no stone is left unturned in making it a fair game. Tribal council goes on for a lot longer because we allow each person to ask a question each to the two finalists. We edit that down. One of the challenges is of weighing up the fairness of the show and then also our job is to make it entertaining as well. We want to make good television as well. The other thing was it was a broken down hotel. It wasn't something we've built. We also had a piece of the hotel fall on the crew members in the control room. It was definitely a real set and a real environment. I remember that happening and turning around and telling everyone to keep quiet. I didn't realize what had happened. I was so absorbed in the content that it didn't register to me that half the crew might have been killed by this falling down hotel.
From a content perspective how do you – because you have a finite amount of minutes per episode – what do you do when you have two great pieces of content but you just can't have it all in the show? How do you choose what goes in and what do you leave on the floor?
Survivor SA is an edited drama although it’s a reality show. There's a lot of characters and their storylines to follow. All of the storylines build up to that final elimination and everything else is secondary. We weigh up and see what storylines are we going to reveal at what time to viewers because we like to tittilate the audience with guessing about who is going at the end of an episode. Survivor SA viewers are very clever and sometimes they see our red herrings and they catch us out, so we try to keep people guessing by giving them bits of the story and keep it unfolding, holding a bit of the story back and turning it into great drama. Its about what's going to make great entertainment and not make people confused.
Survivor SA Santa Carolina live finale of 90 minutes, tonight, M-Net, 90 minutes.
